Veritau News

A huge achievement for our counter fraud team.

The first social care fraud prosecuted by Veritau and City of York Council has reached its conclusion in court. A man from York has been given a 20 month suspended sentence, 80 hours of unpaid work and an order to pay the council more than £1,100 in costs, for a fraud depriving the public purse of over £86k.

Fraud support officers are vital to the work the counter fraud team does. Deborah has been a support officer for 10 years, and started just after Veritau was formed back in 2009. Her role involves seeing a large number of cases at the initial referral stage, responding to and quality-controlling the referrals before they are passed to the rest of the team.

Jane has been a senior investigator for almost 10 years. She started with a small team that has grown significantly, and the work has diversified into many new fraud areas. The counter fraud team investigates 10 different types of fraud and no two days are the same. Jane started working at City of York Council in 2000 as a benefit assessor and moved to their fraud team in 2002.

Ben, the fraud team’s data analytics specialist, has been with Veritau for five years. A large part of his job is working with specialist software IDEA, computer aided auditing tool that allows a trained user to analyse large and complex sets of data. Ben was given a lot of independence with the software to explore how it worked and how Veritau could develop this area to provide greater assurance.

Ellie has been a trainee fraud investigator with Veritau for almost six months. After graduating with a degree in psychology, she was looking for a career that would challenge her. Training as an investigator keeps things interesting as every day is different. She manages her own case load with a wide range of fraud types.

Veritau has been announced as a finalist at the Tackling Economic Crime Awards (TECAs) 2019. Sponsored by Cifas, the UK’s leader in fraud prevention, the awards recognise those working to combat economic crime and provide an opportunity for outstanding performers in the field to be recognised. We are proud to be nominated alongside teams from HMRC, the Cabinet Office and Serious Fraud Office.

The concept of auditing can be traced back to early civilisations. In ancient Egypt, cargo being brought off ships was independently checked and reported to the authorities. Over time the internal audit function has adapted and evolved as a result of changes in the size and functions of organisations, legislation and the implementation of new technologies.

Veritau will shortly be launching its Cyber Security Awareness Week. The campaign will highlight the risks and challenges organisations face in the digital age. With several high profile cyber incidents in the news recently we all need to be alert to the risks we face.

The fraud team have been working with our Communications Officer to prepare messages and infographics for the week. Cyber Security Awareness Week will be from 9 - 13 September.

After receiving suggestions from staff for small and local causes to support, we had a company-wide vote and have selected Chopsticks Northallerton to be our official charity partner for the next 12 months!

We're really excited to start working with them and work together to support them in any way we can. 

We are incredibly excited to announce that the fraud team has been shortlisted for 'Excellence in Counter Fraud' for the fourth year running! The Performance Awards run by the Institute of Revenues Rating and Valuation, will take place on 9 October this year in Telford.